Alaska Packrafting Trip episode 3 of 3

Three Dutch friends set out for a trekking and packrafting adventure in Gates of the Arctic National Park in Alaska. In this third episode, you will see us set up our packrafts and start our float down the river. Norbert washes up on a gravelbar just an hour in our descent, and he loses some of his gear in the river. Bart chases the gear down the river, and manages to save it!

A bit further down the river, during the night, when Norbert is on ‘bear watch’, he spots a bear wandering towards our camp. Probably going for our food & garbage store that we keep 100 meters away from camp. He wakes us up and we hurry outside in our underwear, bearspray ready in hand. This scramble is enough for the bear to vanish. Unfortunately, there is no footage of this little adventure… So there is no bear in this video, but we managed to capture images of some other interesting wildlife at the same camp.

The video ends with a long day of paddling against strong headwinds to reach Takahula Lake. The portage from the Alatna River to Takahula Lake is short but the enormous amount of bear footprints made it adventurous! We reach the southern shore of Takahula Lake late at night, where we wait for the pickup the next day.

Gates of the Arctic National Park the northernmost national park of the US. An area the size of Switzerland, without any roads or trails and largely uninhabited. Just mountains, rivers, arctic tundra and wild animals in their natural habitat. Quite the contrast to our densely populated, well organised country!
Our trip started at Pingo Lake. From the lake we did 2,5 days of trekking along Portage Creek to reach the Alatna River. From there, we floated in 4 days to Takahula lake, the ‘extraction point’. Along the way we spent one day in the Arrigetch Peaks. The map of our trip, with campsites and wildlife sightings, can be found here: https://caltopo.com/m/1DCE

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Music credits:

Fast Bluegrass - Nick Gordy
https://audiojungle.com/user/ngordy/p...

Drive and Dangerous - Amoebacrew
  / amoebacrew  

Straight - Dix
https://dixmusic.nl

Work hard - Dix
https://dixmusic.nl

Pure cinematic - Amoebacrew
  / amoebacrew